a Dagwood. He ate the sandwich at the kitchen table while drinking a homemade lemonade he’d also bought at the deli. It was a little tart and had the kind of taste you could never get out of a bottle. He drank it slowly, thinking about the public embarrassment he’d endured that morning. Ricky had played him like a fiddle.
He went outside onto the screened-in porch. The furniture was covered in plastic, and he peeled a protective sheet off a love seat and made himself comfortable. The porch was in the shade and very cold, and he felt his head clear. His thoughts went back to Ricky holding the winning ticket in front of his face an hour earlier. Why had Ricky done that? He thought about it for several minutes before the answer came to him. Because Ricky didn’t want him to think he had somehow printed the ticket after the fact. Ricky had wanted to establish the numbers. Which meant the barker had somehow manipulated the selection of the five Ping-Pong balls. There was no other logical explanation.
He heard a loud banging coming from inside the house, followed by a man’s voice. He went inside and walked through the house to the front door. The voice sounded familiar, and he jerked the door open and saw Ricky jump back.
“Hey, don’t hit me,” he said, flashing his court-jester grin.
“Should I?”
He stood on the steps, still smiling. “You were pretty pissed when you left the school.”
“You set me up.”
“Me?” Ricky put his hand over his heart. “Scout’s honor, I did no such thing. You just don’t want to believe what you saw is real. You’re a skeptic.”
“So why the house call? You want to rub it in?”
“No, no,” his visitor said. “I came to make peace. I don’t want you thinking I’m some kind of crook. I know that’s what you deal with every day; I went on your Web site. But I’m not a crook. Never broke a law a day in my life. I want to convince you of that.”
“There’s only one problem,” Valentine said.
“What’s that?”
“You
Stepping onto the stoop, Valentine jabbed his forefinger hard into Ricky’s chest. “Tell me something. When you were on your streak at the Mint, why didn’t you try the slot machines? They have a progressive jackpot worth ten million. Why didn’t you take a shot at that?” He could see the gears grinding inside Ricky’s head. “I’ll tell you why. Because you couldn’t rig a slot machine. Practically nobody can. So you avoided them.”
“Slots are for idiots, that’s why I didn’t play them,” Ricky said, slapping Valentine’s hand away. He was blushing and acted like his feelings had been hurt. He stuck his hands into his pockets. “You have a real serious anger issue, you know that?”
“So I’ve heard. Now what do you want?”
“Another chance.”
“To do what?”
“Convince you that this isn’t a scam, that I really am lucky.”
“You going to make me look like a fool again?”
“No,” Ricky said.
Valentine burned a hole into Ricky’s face with his eyes.
“That’s a promise,” Ricky added.
“You just buy this?” Valentine asked, sitting in the passenger seat of Ricky’s Lexus a few minutes later. The car had more amenities than most third-world countries, and he counted twenty-six different buttons on the dashboard and his door.
“I bought it with the money I don’t have,” Ricky said with a derisive laugh.
“You mean the Mint’s money?”
“That’s right. I’ve got an unlimited line of credit everywhere I go in town. It’s like being king for a day, every day of the week.”
They began to descend a steep hill, and Valentine listened but could not hear the car’s gears shift as they reduced speed. It was a hell of a car, and it reminded him that he was going to need new wheels someday soon. He’d been putting off thinking about it, not wanting to jinx the car he had. So far, the philosophy was working just fine.
“I want to explain something about my lucky streak,” Ricky said when they reached the bottom of the hill and the road flattened out. “If I’m drawn to something, I go to it. If not, I don’t. I can’t just sit down at a slot machine and expect to win.”
“Unless you’re drawn to it,” Valentine said.
“That’s right.”
“Let me guess. A little voice tells you.”
Ricky bit the words about to escape his lips. He was trying not to be a jerk, and it was killing him. Valentine, on the other hand, could be a jerk whenever he wanted to, and said, “There was one flaw to the Ping-Pong scam this morning. Want me to tell you what it was?”
Ricky flashed a village-idiot grin. “Oh, pray tell, do.”
“There were a hundred Ping-Pong balls with numbers in that bag. What do you think the odds of you getting all five on your ticket were?”
“I have no idea,” Ricky said, staring at the road.
“More than seventy-five million to one. Which is the same as walking out of your house, and being struck by lightning twice. Get it?”
“No. What’s your point?”
“My point is, if you got four out of five, I could buy that. But not five out of five. There’s a name for what you did. It’s called the too-perfect ending. It screams fix. You and your barker friend and whoever else is involved messed up.”
Ricky blew his cheeks out. They were on a highway, driving away from town, and Valentine glanced at the dashboard and realized they were doing eighty. It didn’t feel that way, the car insulated from everything on the outside except the fleeting scenery.
“And based on that, you’re calling me a cheater.”
Valentine hid the smile forming at his lips. It was the second time that Ricky had used that word. He leaned back in his seat and didn’t respond. After a minute he saw Ricky point at a green highway sign. They were crossing into South Carolina.
“Our exit is a few miles ahead. South Carolina legalized betting on horses last year. I’m going to pick some winners.” He smiled and added, “Don’t worry. For some reason, I’m never one hundred percent when it comes to the ponies. I guess even luck has its problems with stupid beasts.”
The Off Track Betting parlor was a few miles across the state line. From the distance, it resembled a black outhouse with tinted windows. Valentine’s father had frequented OTBs back in New Jersey, and he could still remember the night his old man had lost his paycheck before his mother could get her hands on it. She had cried for hours.
He followed Ricky inside the building. The parlor was packed with unshaven, chain-smoking men staring at a wall of color TVs showing racetracks around the country. Ricky waved at the men, and got dull looks in return.
“Guess you didn’t pick any winners for them, huh?” Valentine asked.
“You think they’d listen?” he said, wiping his nose on the sleeve of his coat.
“Probably not,” Valentine admitted.
“Probably not is right. I could pick winners all day, and they wouldn’t notice.”
Valentine followed him to the far end of the room. Three skinny, sallow-faced men sat behind barred windows and took bets. Valentine wasn’t sure who was worse looking—the people who frequented OTBs, or the people who worked in them.
“You know why they wouldn’t notice?” Ricky said, peeling off his jacket. “Because they all have a system or a premonition or a hunch that tells them how to bet. They think luck is going to wave a magic wand over them, and they’re going to get rich.”
Throwing the jacket over his arm, he approached the betting window. The teller pushed a racing slip through the bars, and Ricky picked up a pencil while staring at the names of the horses. In a matter of seconds he circled
